04/15/2014

Hacking the freemium model with a Lego robot while the gamer sleeps

If you’ve ever felt freemium city-building games on iOS were a little repetitive, you may want to employ a robot to your aid, like Uli Kilian has done with Lego Technic and an Arduino. He’s set up his game of Jurassic Park Builder so that 11 dinosaurs that you tap regularly for rewards are close to one another, and programmed the arm to tap each of them at their designated timer intervals. For example, one dino offers up rewards every ten minutes, and another every fifteen minutes. By putting his iPad on a series of Lego wheels which move the screen around as needed, and an arm that taps the target areas and can also hold to pan around the park, Uli can have his game collecting resources 24/7.